A Life Worth Living NICKY GUMBEL
A Life Worth Living Copyright © Nicky Gumbel 1993 The right of Nicky Gumbel to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book or any other Alpha publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder or the expressly authorised agent thereof. Where an Alpha publication is offered free of charge the fee is waived on condition the publication is used to run or promote Alpha and should not be subject to any subsequent fee or charge. This resource may not be modified or used for any commercial purpose without permission in writing from the copyright holder or the expressly authorised agent thereof. ISBN 978-1-938328-93-0 Illustrations by Charlie Mackesy Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a member of the Hachette Livre UK Group. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790. Scripture quotations marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright © 1346, 1952, and, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotation marked kjv is taken from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press
Contents Preface 7 Introduction 9 01 New Heart
13
02 New Purpose
24
03 New Attitude
35
04 New Responsibilities
46
05 New Friendships
56
06 New Confidence
67
07 New Ambitions
78
08 New Resources
90
09 New Generosity
100
Endnotes 109
Preface The purpose of this book is to introduce, in a simple and practical way, a key letter in the New Testament to those who are starting the Christian life and beginning to read the Bible. It is intended to be read in conjunction with the Bible passages either by an individual, or as a group study, with one person preparing the Bible study using the book as a resource. In Questions of Life, I set out the material we use on Alpha, a course for non-churchgoers, those seeking to find out more about Christianity, and those who have recently come to faith in Jesus Christ. At the end of Alpha, people often ask, ‘What do I do now?’ One of the things I encourage them to do is to study the letter to the Philippians. The material in this book is based on a number of talks that I have given on that subject. I am so grateful to the many people who have been willing to read the text and offer constructive criticisms. In particular I would like to thank Dr Roland Werner, Preb John Pearce, Ken Costa, Jon Soper, Helena Hird, Jo Glen, Tamsen Carter, Lulu Wells, Zilla Hawkins, Jamie Haith and Patricia Hall. Finally, I want to thank Philippa Pearson Miles who typed the manuscript and numerous corrections with good humour and superb efficiency.
01
New Heart I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:3–11
In November 1992, a friend of mine called Kerry Dixon went out to the Philippines with a team to work alongside the Christians out there. One day he and his team went to speak to an isolated tribe called the T’boli at Lake Sebu. It involved walking for several hours through rough terrain and mountain tracks over paddy fields and plantations. They took with them two interpreters: a Filipino pastor to translate English into Cebuano, and a T’boli member to translate Cebuano into his own language. At about 8 pm, after nightfall, word spread that the ‘white people’ had appeared. The tribe emerged from the darkness to gather by the light of flaming torches. Kerry then spoke about Jesus through the two interpreters to this group of people who had never heard about him. After the talk they pushed forward a middle-aged man, blind from birth,
14
A LIFE WORTH LIVING
who was well-known and respected throughout the village. If Jesus was God they wanted to see him in action. In the hushed silence Kerry laid hands on the man and prayed for Jesus to heal him. He then asked if the man could see. He replied through the interpreters that he could see flickering lights through the darkness. After praying a second time, he could make out Kerry’s outline in front of him. The third time Kerry prayed, there was no need for any interpretation – the man was jumping for joy and praising the living God, who had performed a miracle before their eyes. All fifty people present that night were converted and a new church was begun. The church there is still growing.
A heart of confidence in the power of God (vv.3–6) The church at Philippi, like the church of T’boli, was founded by an extraordinary display of God’s power. The endeavour began in ad 49 in utter frustration. Paul could not get into Asia or Bithynia. Every door appeared shut, but, as so often happens when circumstances seem against us, God opened up something much better. In a vision, Paul saw a man saying: ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’ (Acts 16:9). Paul responded by going with his companion, Silas, to Philippi. On the first Saturday that he was there he went down to the river
New Heart
where there was a group of women praying. (They had probably gathered there because there were not the necessary ten Jewish men in Philippi to form a synagogue.) As Paul spoke about Jesus, Lydia, a rich merchant woman, was converted and persuaded Paul to go and stay in her home. While he was staying there, he was followed around the town by a fortune-teller, who was clearly under demonic influence as a result of her involvement in the occult, and who kept on saying: ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved’ (Acts 16:17). Finally, after several days of this, Paul could take her endless repetitions no longer and turned around and said, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!’ (Acts 16:18). At that moment the evil spirit came out. The woman was a slave and her owners were furious that she had lost her supernatural powers. They seized Paul and Silas and hauled them up in front of the authorities. They whipped up the crowd against them. The magistrates bowed to the pressure and ordered that they should be stripped, severely flogged and thrown into prison. In prison, with their feet in stocks, Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to God. They had seen God’s power to change the direction of Lydia’s life and to bring her whole family to faith. They had seen God’s power in setting free a slave afflicted by an evil spirit. Now they saw God’s power at work in another miraculous way: an earthquake shook the prison and every door flew open. The prison officer in charge was about to commit suicide as he thought all the prisoners had escaped and he feared the consequences. Paul, faced with freedom, chose instead to stay, and to bring his jailer to Christ. When Paul assured him that the prisoners were all still there he asked: ‘What must I do to be saved?’ This is what might be called ‘an evangelistic opportunity’! Paul explained what the prison officer had to do and thus he, and immediately afterwards his whole family, came to Christ and were baptised. These events were so clearly supernatural that Paul saw
15
16
A LIFE WORTH LIVING
the astonishing power of God behind the human agency of his words. It was God’s power that started the church at Philippi, therefore he could have supreme confidence that God would complete what he had begun. This is the confidence we have if we are Christians: we have responded to God’s call and he has begun a good work in us. For the prison officer, the circumstances surrounding his conversion were extremely dramatic. Lydia would have been able to point to that extraordinary day when Paul arrived unannounced at the river as the starting point of her Christian life. Some of us know the exact day we became Christians; some of us may have experienced a dramatic conversion. However, it is quite likely that the children of the prison officer or of Lydia grew up as Christians and never knew a time when they did not have a relationship with God. It does not matter which category we fall into: if God begins a good work in us, he will carry it on to completion. We need to retain this confidence even when life is difficult; indeed, that is the moment when we most need to exercise faith and hold on to the promises of God, confident in his power. When Paul writes that ‘he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus’ (v.6), he is thinking primarily of their church. But the promise applies equally to individual Christians. We can have this confidence for others as well as ourselves. Every true Christian who knows, loves and follows Jesus Christ can be sure that God will bring to completion the work he has begun in them. Jesus promised his disciples eternal life (John 10:28) – a quality of life which starts now and goes on for ever. We cannot have eternal life one minute and not the next. A Christian may lose their job, money, liberty or even their life, but they can never lose eternal life. Jesus added, ‘No one can snatch them out of my hand’ (John 10:28). The hallmark of the true Christian is that he endures. It is true that some profess the faith and then seem to fall away. This may
New Heart
be because their original profession of faith was spurious, or it could be that it was genuine and that they have backslidden and will one day return. The first person I had the joy of leading to Christ was called Henry. We had been walking in the mountains of Norway. As we were sitting on the train coming back home, we prayed together and he gave his life to Christ. His life was changed. But after eighteen months, he started to drift as a Christian. He gave up reading the Bible and praying. He stopped going to church. He put all his Christian books up in the attic. For four years he wanted nothing to do with Christianity or Christians. Then through a series of events he came back to Jesus Christ. He told me afterwards that during those four years in which he had tried to give up being a Christian he had always known that Christianity was true and that he could not get away no matter how hard he tried. If God begins a good work in someone, he will carry it on to completion.
A heart of compassion for the people of God (vv.7–8) Paul was not a ‘soft touch’ or a doormat. He was quite capable of standing up to the Roman authorities who had wronged him.
17
18
A LIFE WORTH LIVING
He did not simply allow them to get away with having mistreated him. He pointed out that he and Silas were Roman citizens and that they had been illegally flogged. He demanded his rights and embarrassed the authorities. He knew how to be tough, but he also knew how to be tender. When Paul says, ‘I have you in my heart’ (v.7) he is expressing his deep love for the people of Philippi. He has already spoken of their ‘partnership in the gospel’ (v.5). Now he speaks of sharing in ‘God’s grace’ with them (v.7). There is such a close bond between those who work together for Jesus Christ. There is an even closer bond where one has been responsible for the conversion of the others. He says that he longs for all of them ‘with the affection of Christ Jesus’ (v.8). The Authorised Version translates this, ‘how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ’ (kjv). The original Greek word in the New Testament refers to the upper intestines, the heart, lungs and liver – the place they perceived as the source of deep emotion. ‘Compassion’ is perhaps the nearest English equivalent. As J. B. Lightfoot put it: ‘His heart throbs with the heart of Christ.’1 Paul was a man of love and compassion. This extended even to his jailer: without such love he would no doubt have taken revenge on his torturer. Instead he led him to Christ; he had the compassion of Jesus Christ. Paul Negrut, a Romanian pastor who was severely persecuted under the Ceausescu regime, was formerly a leader of the church in Romania. He spent six months in a concentration camp and a further six months being interrogated all day, every day. Attempts were made to kill his family by connecting the water pipes in his house to the electrical system. After the regime had fallen, he heard one day that the man who had persecuted him for six months was in hospital dying of cancer. Paul Negrut went to visit him. The man’s mother was crying and asked Paul to pray for her son. Paul Negrut laid hands on his persecutor and prayed for him. He recovered and they have since prayed together.
New Heart
The word in this verse for affection is frequently used of Jesus. The apostle Paul had Jesus’ heart and Jesus’ love, and this was the motivating force behind his ministry. Without love it does not matter how doctrinally correct or how gifted we are, for Paul writes elsewhere that without love we are nothing (1 Corinthians 13). I know that at times I have tried to minister without love and it is always disastrous. When love is abundant among us, we are able not to hold offences against one another. When we lack love, we are apt to misunderstand every action and end up in disagreement. That has certainly been my experience. We need to pray for the compassion of Jesus Christ to fill us. When I was at theological college, I went through a difficult time spiritually. I had given up a job where I was paid to give my opinion and my services as an advocate. I had also been involved in leadership in my local church. At college my opinion was no longer regarded as being of any value! In addition, I was no longer part of regular, active ministry. I began to feel very insecure. As I read a lot of books by scholars who were unorthodox in their beliefs and often hostile to biblical truths, I found my faith was under attack. My heart grew cold. After I had been at college for two years I went to a conference where the speaker asked those involved in full-time ministry to come forward to be prayed for. He prayed that God would give us his heart for the people around us. As he prayed I experienced God’s love in my heart. I cried as I looked round at some of the other students and saw them in a new way. God opened my eyes to see that they too were struggling. I saw their loneliness, sadness and fears. I suspect that for a moment I had a glimpse of what Paul is speaking of here when he uses the phrase ‘the affection of Christ Jesus’. That experience transformed my last year at college. I looked at people in a totally different light and I think God even opened up a ministry for me there in a small way.
19